GameGuides:Making Money
There are many ways to make money, including trading, hunting down criminals, and looting. Trading A good trade route would be starting at Wolf-Reiser, buying up on Implants and stuff with high price ranges, then moving on to Aquila and buying the rest of the Implants there on a station with 10 tech points (Carme). After that you can do two things: *Valkyrie & Supernova: go to Loma and sell there. *Base: Journey to another system that has high prices (preferably Pan) and sell there. Buy organs and repeat until there aren't any at the respective station. Hunting Criminals There are two different kinds of criminal hunts in the game: * Side Mission: One of the side missions that can be picked up at a Space Lounge is to hunt a criminal. If you accept the mission, the criminal in question will definitely appear at the planet where you're told he is, the next time you are there. Your autopilot will have coordinates to a Waypoint that will lead you to him. He will appear on your scanner as an unnamed "Pirate". He will be somewhat tougher to defeat than the typical pirate, but should also appear alone. * Most-Wanted Criminals: In the Supernova add-on, you can find these on the Missions screen, Most Wanted tab. This will tell you a general path that the criminal is following, but there is less certainty to when/where these criminals will actually be found than there is for the side-mission criminals. You must actively aim your scanning reticle at other ships until your scanner shows the criminal's name in red (it may have appeared in red, yellow, or even green before scanning). When you do locate a Most-Wanted criminal, he will usually be accompanied by several other ships that will become hostile as soon as you've IDed him. It also helps to be in the habit of just scanning every ship around every planet in case a Most-Wanted ID pops up. This can easily be combined with "Vulture" looting below. Looting Simple, just sell stuff you loot depending on what you want to fight...or not: * Pirates: Best for beginers are risky territories, best for others are dangerous. * Local Security Forces: The risky is usally the best for this if you want large numbers to fight, secure is easy for this but not a lot of loot. * Foreign Freighters: This is when you destroy/EMP the freighters which don't belong to the same faction as the system (e.g. targeting Nivelian freighters in Terran systems) This means the local security force doesn't attack you, but you still get some loot. This will make that faction hostile, however, if you stay out of their systems, then its fine. However, not a lot of loot comes from each freighter. * "Vulture" looting: When you've finished off any hostiles that initially appeared at a planet (or there are none), linger a bit before leaving/docking and check to see if the neutrals happen to be fighting each other. For instance, Vossk fighters at a Terran station will shoot at Terran ships, who will return fire if armed. If the attackers eliminate all of the defending fighters, they'll start on defenseless freighters, until another fighter spawns from the station and the attackers turn on it. As long as any attackers exist, this battle will continue. A less-common variation occurs when neither neutral factions calls the planet home, such as Midorian fighters firing upon Nivelian freighters at a Terran station. Since neither faction has a station from which additional fighters can spawn, these battles tend to be shorter in duration. Without shooting anything, or perhaps more importantly, having anyone (deliberately) shoot at you, you can fly around picking up loot from the destroyed ships with your tractor beam. You may take some accidental shield damage if you get caught in the line of fire between the two factions, but it's otherwise a very safe way to pick up loot. This does not appear to greatly affect your reputation with either faction, especially if you're gathering loot from both factions in rough balance. If you're very close to making an enemy of one of the two factions involved, this may be just enough to push them over the threshold, so take care in such situations. This technique may take quite a bit of time. If you have wingmen, their contract is very likely to expire while you're exploiting a battle, so when you finally dock at a station to sell the loot, expect them to leave your company. * Complete Destruction: This is only recommended for players who have very good weapons, equipment etc. (e.g. A ship costing more than $2,000,000, M6 A4 "Raccoon" or similar, Fluxed Matter Shield /Particle Shield, cloaking device is useful, armour is optional, Crimson Drain /Pandora Leech can be helpful.) Basically, this is where you got to a system with lots of ships (usually dangerous stations) and destroy everything, picking up loot as you go along. ** Spawn Trap: After you have completely destroyed everything, and if no pirates spawn, you can fly to the station, staying as far away as possible whilst still being in range of your weapons, and aiming at the station (where you would normally aim if you were to lock on to the station.) Set your weapons to fire continuously, then every time one of the secuity forces ships spawns, it gets destroyed. (Raccoons are preferable because they have slight auto-aim.) NOTE: If several ships spawn at once, and one manages to boost away from the station, then it can destroy you. Therefore, it is not advisable to leave the game unattended whilst spawn trapping. Optionally, before taking up that optimal firing position, you can set some sentry guns so that the station is just inside their range, but they are out of your line of fire, so that you won't destroy your own ordnance. If you have a repair beam, most damage the sentry guns may take from spawning fighters should be quickly healed. The extra firepower from the sentry guns should help deal with spawn groups that might otherwise overwhelm you.